While legal tech startups chase funding, LexisNexis is closing in on £2bn revenue

For much of the past two years, the legal tech conversation has been dominated by AI startups raising hundreds of millions of dollars at multi-billion-dollar valuations. RELX's latest results are a reminder that one of the industry's largest technology businesses already belongs to an incumbent.

The FTSE 100 information and analytics group generated £4.9 billion in revenue in the first half of 2026, with LexisNexis, its legal tech and content business, contributing a record £959 million.Annualised, that puts LexisNexis on course to generate almost £2 billion in revenue this year alone.

By comparison, Harvey recently reached $300 million in ARR, while Legora announced in April that it had surpassed $100 million ARR. While those figures reflect pure-play legal AI businesses, the comparison highlights the gulf in scale between the incumbent and the fastest-growing legal AI startups.

The growth

Legal was RELX's fastest-growing division in the first half of the year, with the company attributing much of that momentum to increasing adoption of its AI products.

The company said growth in its law firm and corporate legal business was being driven by continued adoption of its agentic legal assistant, Lexis+ with Protégé, alongside new functionality including Protégé Work, which includes integration with Microsoft Word and Outlook.

The company also emphasised that LexisNexis’ technology strategy is multi-model, meaning it is not tied to a single large language model and can switch providers depending on performance and cost.

Different economics

The results also underline one of the biggest competitive advantages enjoyed by established legal information providers. Parent company RELX generated £4.9 billion in revenue and £1.2 billion in adjusted net profit during the first six months of 2026, while expanding its operating margin despite continued AI investment.

Unlike many legal AI startups, whose rapid growth has been fuelled by successive venture capital rounds, RELX is able to fund product development from its existing business while remaining highly profitable.

LexisNexis currently employs around 4,000 technologists dedicated to developing its products and has reaffirmed plans to continue investing in AI.

That financial model also appears to be shaping its commercial strategy. While legal AI companies are increasingly suggesting a move towards consumption-based pricing as token usage surges in the agentic era, LexisNexis said it has no current plans to change from its subscription model.

The company said its token costs represent less than 1% of its overall costs, which it keeps low by dynamically deploying the most appropriate AI models and agents for each use case.

Though RELX is not immune from the competitive pressures reshaping the legal AI market. Earlier this year, its shares fell after Anthropic unveiled a legal AI plugin for Claude Cowork, prompted by investor concerns that frontier AI model providers could compete more directly with established providers.